The podcast is the great civiliser of the modern journey to work: consume as you commune as you commute. The career-minded IT Pro, isolated and ear-shelled up like Mildred Montag in Fahrenheit 451, can simultaneously CPD up the latest tech while elbowing down the carriage to be near the woman who, having stowed her iPad in its …

to be honest, the program would be much more enjoyable if Bragg kept his mouth shut. Or if he wasn't there at all. His random injections of speech seem only to exist to justify his pay cheque by proving he was awake during the recording

If you press litmus paper to Jim Al-Khalili, does it go blue?

There are some truly wonderful episodes of IoT, it is always a favourite to listen to. And, I might add, Inside Health, Inside Science, Material World, Costing the Earth, All in the Mind, A History of the World, The Bottom Line. Best of all - The Life Scientific.

Not great for car radio

I really ought to listen to these podcasts. I only ever seem to hear bits of IoT/Monkey Cage etc. I don't know why it is but they always seem to begin on R4 a few minutes before I start a car journey or end a few minutes after I get out.

I forget who it was, or what they were talking about, but I once heard a comedian opine on Radio 4 that "this combines the fascinating topics of conversation from one of Melvyn Bragg's dinner parties combined with the mind-numbing tedium of one of Melvyn Bragg's dinner parties."

Letter from American

And no, I'm not talking about The Proclaimers.

Alistair Cooke's. Radio 4 have put many/all (well nearly 1,000) of the things online. I think the later ones are a bit less impressive, though I still liked them. But as an interesting piece of commentary on US 20th Century history, many of them are great. After the first few hundred you might notice him repeating the odd story, but given he'd been doing the damned things for 40 years by that point (and had never heard of a podcast) I'd happily forgive him.

The Media Show is a good podcast too. But I'm still getting used to the new host, since Steve Richards died.

Oh, and on the subject of podcasts. Mike Duncan's 'History of Rome' and then 'Revolutions' are truly brilliant. Although the first few start a bit shakily - given he'd never cast his pod before.

And my new favourite is David Crowther's 'The History of England'. He started with the Romans, and is now up to Henry VIII - but he's been slowing down. Hard to do ten years in a single podcast, when there is so much more information. Though I believe he prefers to call them shedcasts.

Railspeak

Melvyn Bragg in his fiery lair on the roof of the Tate

There was a comedy drama podcast some time ago where the protagonist was someone wishing to join the intellectual elite (or at the very least able to understand the Times Crossword) and their journey through life from a young age to achieve this.

The big reveal and climax of the show is that it is all just theatre, there are no solutions to the Times Crossword (people just use them as a kind of shibboleth and pretend to solve them) most versions of high art are not understood by anyone and the evil genius behind the whole charade is Melvyn Bragg who, as some kind of end boss, resides in a fiery lair on the roof of the Tate.

Lovely turn of phrase

In Our Time, and repeated at a later time

The morning broadcast is actually live, and so it often has the features that Verity describes, with lurches of logic and certain academics trying to hog the microphone. I listen to these on morning drives, and then often hear the evening repeat. The latter has had the benefit of attention from the editing suite, and often there are entire segments that have been shifted so that things make more sense, and fluffs have been taken out. I guess the polished versions are the ones that make it onto iPlayer and the podcast platforms.